. “Vehicles are getting smarter, and we need to get ahead of that rapid change to understand how drivers respond to the
technology,” says Lee, an expert in driver distraction. “The fundamental reason for the simulator is to understand how people respond to technology so we can design it better and save lives. The car is designed from the ground up to be the car of the future and something we can use to develop and test next-generation vehicle technology and road infrastructure.”

Funded by UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the simulator includes a Ford Fusion with a 24-foot screen wrapped around in front and an additional screen behind the car. Six projectors cast a virtual driving environment on the screens, immersing a driver in as much as 270 degrees of simulation. The projectors render images at the same resolution the human eye does. This allows researchers to, for example, project signage exactly as it would appear on a physical road. The simulator is motion-based and capable of one degree of movement in any direction.

Flexible software from Realtime Technologies Inc. combined with the high-end hardware will allow researchers to test a wide variety of driver behaviors and responses, many of which aren’t economically or ethically possible to test on physical roads. Drivers could be dosed with alcohol or learn to navigate a new intersection design. Additionally, the simulator is likely to directly benefit Wisconsin drivers, as Noyce plans to replicate segments of roads around the state that are known to cause traffic problems and test traffic control solutions for those segments.

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